London Mysteries World Information
Making this is going to kill me. In brief God is dead, and not in the Nietzschean sense. In fact, so are all those little-g gods, nearly all angels, and a good 1/3rd of the demons about - the divine is struggling, and it's left the secret supernatural world in chaos as it tries to figure out a new hierarchy of power. While they do this, however, something - or someone - has stirred up humanity's sense of ownership over the earth, and a clandestine black market has grown, specializing in the sale of supernatural body parts...or soul fragments. It's made the world an even more dangerous place than it used to be, and more and more, that's beginning to bleed over into the mundane side of life, both spiritually and in terms of crime. In-depth The supernatural truth in London Mysteries borrows loosely from various religions - the probably most-familiar Judeo-Christian is being employed. However, the world's core is based on another real-life religion called Yezidism, which is based in Kurdistan and has been said to be the oldest still-practiced religion on earth. Yezidis worship their own type of angels, but are frequently accused of being devil-worshipers instead, owing to the fact that the central figure of their religion, a phoenix-like creature named Melek Taus, is identifiable with the devil - and in Yezidi belief, he redeemed himself. An important tenet of their religion is that no one is purely good or evil, and that real darkness comes from the hearts of humanity, that what we have to fear is actually ourselves. The supernatural is just a reflection or projection of that darkness. Melek Taus, however, along with all of those other previously mentioned divine beings, is gone. Faith is beginning to wane in many avenues of the world, and people who desperately need something to believe in sometimes resort to a sort of hyperfocused zealotry, leading to an increase in evangelical ministries, especially in the United States and Mexico. People seem to need their gods, since even if most of them don't know what is wrong, it's clear that something terrible has happened. Supernatural beings God/gods Angels Demons Witches Your low-level psychics and magic-users who happen to have been born with their abilities apply here. Those would be witches from the first lines, the thousand children of Lilith who were the earliest ancestors of present-day magic-users, because witches are descended from the Bene Elohim or "Nephilim" of the Book of Enoch- Bene Elohim generally being demonic and malicious in nature, but their descendants were not bound to the same kind of evil, and there were always exceptions. These witches lines have mostly died out, and the ones who remain - maybe forty lines of that beginning thousand - are not considered hugely powerful, having been weakened over the years as they became more human, but despite popular belief they can still pack a punch, have a reputation for being shamelessly conniving, and tend to congregate in covens to focus their powers together in order to have maximum impact against enemies. They can use any sort of foci (bones or wands or blood-letting, etc.) to utilize their abilities, and may be of any ethnicity, having been spread across the globe for thousands and thousands of years since the Great Flood. They are also mostly women, though not by any means all of them. The exceptions would be the new lines, who are both more potent and more dangerously difficult to control, with incidents of their abilities killing them before they make it out of childhood (Ayesha Tebari is one example of how the divine can devour the flesh, causing a great deal of anguish for her maker, who left clues and information for surviving descendants of the other angels in hopes they'd someday be able to resurrect his progeny). All of the new lines are of Middle Eastern ancestry partially or fully, and have links to Central Asia and the Middle East in some way; generally they are marked by very strong personalities, though not all of them are warriors, and all of them are somewhat to unusually tall, in keeping with the "giant" nature of their legendary Bene Elohim ancestors. Prior to the disappearance of Melek Taus and his haftan - seven angels who followed him and helped him care for the universe - they used their magic and studied the signs occurring around them. When they saw foresaw what would happen to them, they deliberately made the decision to create these new Bene Elohim of their own nature, to protect the earth when they were gone, chosen from Yezidi women who still believed in angels and Melek Taus. They actually created eight, one for each angel, but only five lines have survived, the youngest of which is Melek Taus's, created in 1900. The list is as follows: * Zillah Kara, line c. 1865. * Ayesha Tebari, line c. 1870, deceased 1876. * Mandana Kiyanfar, line c. 1875. * Naza Bilgin, line c. 1880; deceased 1943. * Francesca Persaud, line c. 1885. * Lale Chelki, line c. 1890. * Baia Sharmazanashvili, line c. 1895, deceased 1976. * Hasibe Ozcelik/Norea Serhati, line c. 1900. Sorcerers Sorcerers are, unlike witches, not born with automatic, terrifying power. They do have to have a certain something which permits them to access magical ability, but if they never learn, they can live normal lives. This makes what they do more like a discipline or an art form (one must have the talent to draw to utilize it, but you won't find yourself spontaneously drawing against your will, either, unlike a pyrokinetic), and therefore they tend to be better-controlled in their abilities. Therefore a sorcerer who has gone off the rails is a scary, scary thing, because most of the time, they've deliberately made the decision to do something large-scale. Like witches, they tend to run in families, keeping secret societies to themselves; they also tend to not get along with witches, a lot of the time, since their magical counterparts are often a lot more chaotic in their work. Were-creatures Vampires Fairies Djinn Ghosts and zombies Misc monsters Telesis International The modification market International control Annihilation Category:The London Mysteries Category:Plot Points